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Two men stand in 1945 in a crater left by the test atomic bomb at what is known today as the Trinity site, in New Mexico. The National Cancer Institute is studying the health fallout from the blast, 70 years later.

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Nearly 70 years have elapsed since the first atomic bomb was dropped—not the ones visited upon Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but the test bombs that were inflicted on unsuspecting New Mexico residents near the Trinity testing site, including 19 American Indian pueblos, two Apache tribes and some chapters of the Navajo Nation.

Now, at long last, the National Cancer Institute is examining, as requested by former Senator Jeff Bingaman after a 10-year study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the health effects of the nuclear industry on New Mexicans. The CDC study, titled the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment, concluded that internal radiation doses for New Mexicans from "intakes of radioactivity via consumption of water, milk, and homegrown vegetables ... could have posed significant health risks for individuals exposed after the blast."

Children may have received the most exposure, said Tina Cordova, Santa Clara Pueblo, head of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders’ Consortium, given that milk is a prime source of radiation contamination. People in 1945—American Indian and non-Indians alike—grew or hunted all of their food, she said. Everything they consumed was produced within the radiation field created by Trinity.

The study, according to co-investigator Jennifer Loukissas, will involve a review of the historical, ethnographic, sociological and scientific literature and the collection of information from people in New Mexico in order to come up with a "model that we can use to most accurately estimate radiation dose and then project the number the cancer cases that may be related to the Trinity test."

This is not an epidemiological study, principal investigator Steven L. Simon explained. Nor will it involve trying to count the number of cancer cases related to Trinity or identify which individuals have cancers caused by the test. Such a study, Loukissas said, is simply not possible because no one kept track of cancers in New Mexico before the state's cancer registry was established in 1966.

"We're going to estimate … the number [of cancer cases] that occurred from this single test by first understanding how much exposure the people got,” said Simon.

Following the review of the literature, "Stage two is we plan to come to New Mexico and carry out some in-depth interviews, guided interviews [with a] nutritional epidemiologist [whose] expertise is in talking with people about dietary intake, food gathering practices and lifestyle habits," Loukissas said. “This information will be considered in combination with information from other studies and what is known about how much radiation exposure is likely to cause how much cancer. From that work, scientists will estimate how many cancer cases were likely to have been caused by the Trinity test.”

She added that she is hoping to be put in touch with elders who were caring for and feeding children at the time of the blast so as to learn what the children were eating as well as the adults.

“These could be sisters, mothers, although probably most of the mothers are no longer living, but it could be aunts, extended family,” Loukissas said.

For all concerned, the best presentation on the true health effects of the testing and also nuclear meltdowns was discussed by doctors and researchers at the Symposium on the "Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident" which can be found on ENENEWS.
That presentation is well worth watching. It is like a million dollar education on the dangers of nuclear radiation.

It's not a mystery--why is the "language" so low-keyed and sugar coated??? Just look at the effects on the people and the environment in Hiroshima and Nagasaki--If the Trinity test was the test run for Hiroshima and Nagasaki--we not only have similar results in terms of the effects--we have unknown numbers of people with radiation sickness--unknown numbers of people who died soon after--while publicly the news reported, "there was a blinding light for a number of miles from the explosion--don't look at the light and you'll be ok"--then there are those who have come down with multiple cancers and two or three generations later, a high incidence of a variety of cancers popping up indiscriminately--"radiation could have posed significant health risk to exposed individuals after the blast"--could have posed????? How come no one's drinking the water or eating the fish in Fukushima after the tsunami caused the nuclear reactor (sold by an American company to the Japanese--and told the Japanese--"it's perfectly safe") How come the cow's milk can't be drunk and the rice can't be eater??? How come the government made a frozen dead zone and no one, except the nuclear reactor workers can go in there??? People, take the initiative and record the oral histories of the people in New Mexico--don't wait for the government to do it--and after the interviews, then what????? The report needs to be posted from every housetop and every tv station and radio station and newspaper--then what??? After the "expose, compensate every person descended from someone living at the time of the explosion. Demand an end to weapons of nuclear death This is about life and the environment and the future of Turtle Island.The time is now.

Ahh, another useless government study that will spend large sums of money to no avail. As was noted, there are no old records for comparison, lifestyles have changed and the researchers will provide little useful results as everything will have qualifiers like: "could have," " cases that may be related", " will be considered", and one of my personal favorite hedge phrases: " is likely."